Later that night, Corrie told her father and Betsie about Jop’s arrest. The question, the same question the ten Booms had asked themselves at other dangerous moments, was asked again. Should they go on with their underground activities and put themselves and their guests at risk? And the answer, as it had been every other time they’d asked the question, was yes. They could do nothing else. They would do all they could to keep their guests safe, and they would trust God to do the rest.
When Corrie finally got to bed that night, she lay awake for a long time looking at the old bookshelf with the Angels’ Den tucked behind it. “God,” she prayed, “whatever happens, surround that hiding place with Your angels and keep any who hide there safe in Your care.”
Chapter 7
The Secret Was Safe
Corrie rolled over in bed. It was no use trying to get up; she was still too sick to move. When she’d fallen asleep on Sunday night, she had hoped to wake up well enough to “work.” There were ration cards to distribute, and she needed to find out what she could about where Jop was being held by the Germans. But her head was spinning, and every bone in her body ached. She sighed deeply. She would have to stay in bed for at least another day, maybe two. This was proving to be a tough flu virus to shake. It probably didn’t help that her fifty-one-year-old body was exhausted from the constant stress of worrying about a Gestapo raid.
Throughout the day, Betsie ferried hot cups of tea up to her along with news of what was happening downstairs. It was a busy day at the Beje. Willem and Peter had arrived to conduct their weekly afternoon prayer meeting. After the national anthem incident in Velsen, Peter had been kept in prison in Amsterdam for two weeks, given a stern warning never to play the song again, and then released. Now he was crammed into the parlor with his uncle and twenty-five residents of Haarlem for the prayer meeting. Corrie could hear his piano playing drift up to her room as the group sang a hymn. On her next trip up with more tea, Betsie told Corrie that several members of the underground had been in and out of the clockshop exchanging information and picking up bundles of Hans’s leaflets. Meanwhile, the guests were in the men’s bedroom on the third floor, reading and playing chess. Most people at the prayer meeting in the parlor didn’t even know there were such guests in the house.
Towards midafternoon, Betsie again appeared in Corrie’s room. She opened the curtains a little to reveal a damp, dreary day outside. Earlier in the morning, it had even snowed for a while. “There is a man downstairs,” she said. “He says he must see you at once. He says his name is Jan Vogel, but I’ve never seen him before. I said I’d get Father or Willem for him to talk to, but he insists he needs to talk to you.”
Corrie swung her legs over the side of the bed and slowly stood up. “Tell him I’m coming,” she sighed, as she slipped a dress over her pajamas. Sick as she felt, if the man had to see her, then he was going to have to take her the way she was, clothes over her pajamas and all. She bypassed the small mirror on the wall. She knew she looked terrible without reminding herself. Slowly she descended the stairs, clinging to the railing for support.
In the clockshop was a short man with wire-rimmed glasses. Corrie looked him up and down. Betsie was right, he was a stranger. “I am Corrie ten Boom,” she introduced herself. “What can I do for you? Do you have a watch or a clock that needs to be mended?”
The short man shook his head. Without looking Corrie in the eye, he started to speak and tell about how his home had been raided while he was out. He and his wife had been hiding a Jewish girl whom the Germans had found. His wife had also been arrested, and now he had heard through the underground that the policeman holding his wife was easy to bribe. He felt sure that for six hundred guilders he could get his wife freed.
Corrie fought through the fog in her flu-muddled mind to think about what the man had said. Was it a trick, or was the man telling her the truth?
“I don’t see how I can help you,” she finally stammered. “I am only a watchmaker, and times are not good right now. It is all I can do to feed my sister and my old father.”
The man smiled at her. “But I was told Tante Corrie would help me,” he said confidently.
“And who told you that?” asked Corrie, wanting more than anything to end the conversation and climb back up the stairs to bed.
“Members of the underground. They did not give their names; it is too dangerous of course,” he said matter of factly.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Corrie knew that the man should have used at least one of the code names when referring to people in the underground, but her head was spinning. She needed to sit down on the stool in the workroom. What should she do? The man’s wife was certainly worth six hundred guilders, especially if she had been arrested for hiding a Jew. On the other hand, what if his story weren’t true? Unsure as she was about the story, there was six hundred guilders in the bank, and if the story were true, it would be an honor to use the money to release a courageous woman from prison.
“Come back at five o’clock, and I will have the money for you,” she said. “And now please excuse me; I am not well.”
The short man adjusted his glasses on his nose, bowed slightly, and left the clockshop.
Corrie asked Betsie to arrange for someone to go to the bank and withdraw six hundred guilders, and then she climbed back upstairs, pausing outside the parlor for a moment to listen to Peter’s music.
Hoping to make the most of being awake, Corrie crawled back into bed with her briefcase, which was filled with documents about the work of the underground. Tomorrow was ration card distribution day, and she had to work out how many cards each house hiding guests should get. She pulled a ledger from the bag and opened it. She wrote February 29, 1944, the following day’s date, at the top of the page. She was trying so hard to focus on the job at hand she didn’t even notice the date marked a leap year. Corrie looked down the list of drop-off points for the ration cards and at the number of people who needed to be fed with them. But the harder she looked, the more the numbers and names on the list became a swirling jumble of shapes. It was no use; she could concentrate on them no longer. She took her reading glasses off and let her head fall back. By the time her head touched her pillow, Corrie was fast asleep. The briefcase on the bed slipped to the floor with a thud and spilled open.
The next sound Corrie heard was an urgent cry. “Hurry, hurry. Get down. Hand me the ashtray and don’t tip it.” Corrie awoke with her heart beating wildly. What was happening in her room? People were racing past her bed. Suddenly her eyes opened wide, and she sat bolt upright. She was in charge of practice drills for getting into the Angels’ Den, and she hadn’t arranged one for today. So it could not be a practice; it had to be a raid. The Gestapo must be coming!
In an instant, Corrie was out of bed, urging people to move faster, throwing bags and pillows in after them. Mary was the last of the regulars to make it to the Angels’ Den. She puffed and wheezed as the others pulled her inside. Corrie prayed a silent prayer that Mary’s breathing would quiet down. She slid the wall back in place and shut the linen closet door behind them. Just as she was pushing a basket in front of the door, a tall blond man sprinted into the room. At a glance Corrie recognized him as Arnold “Smit,” an important figure in the underground. Corrie supposed he had been delivering information to the Beje and was now trapped by the raid.
Arnold looked around the small bedroom in confusion. “The others? I thought they came this way,” he said in a panicked voice. Corrie flung the closet door open and reached down to slide back the wall. Arms grabbed Arnold from inside, and in an instant he, too, had disappeared into the Angels’ Den. Corrie shoved the wall back in place, slammed the door shut, and raced back to bed.
She had just smoothed the covers when she saw the briefcase spilled open on the floor where it had fallen from her bed. “Oh, God,” she prayed. The case was filled with information, names, addresses, and ration card numbers. If the Gestapo found it, many lives could be lost. She had to get rid of it. In a split second she was out of bed again. She grabbed the case and its spilled contents, flung open the linen-closet door, pulled back the wall, and threw it all into the secret chamber. Hurry, hurry, she told herself as she slid the wall back in place. If the Gestapo walk in right now, everyone will be caught. As soon as the wall was secure, she pushed the linen-closet door closed and made a leap back to her bed. She tried to breath normally. I’ve been asleep. I’m sick. I don’t know what’s going on. I’ll act surprised when the Gestapo come in, she told herself. She pushed her head back into the pillow and shut her eyes.
Seconds later, she heard footsteps on the stairs. The door to her bedroom flung open, and a man in a gray business suit walked in. It was not at all what Corrie had expected. “Who, who are you?” she stammered. “Don’t come too close; I’m sick.” She coughed in his direction to make her point.
The man grunted at her. “What’s your name?”
“Cornelia ten Boom,” she replied.
He grunted again. “Get dressed, now,” he ordered, producing a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. He scanned the paper quickly. “ten Boom, Cornelia,” he read. “So you are the mastermind behind all of this?”
Corrie said nothing as she slipped her dress over her pajamas for the second time that day. Her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t get the buttons through the buttonholes.
“Where are the Jews?” the man asked harshly.
“What Jews?” asked Corrie, trying not to look in the direction of the Angels’ Den. She could still hear Mary’s muffled wheezing. What if the man stopped talking long enough to hear it, too? Corrie pulled her shoes on quickly and forced another cough. She had to keep coughing and get the man out of her room quickly.
She stumbled towards the door without even bending to do up her shoelaces. The man followed her, shoving her down the stairs towards the dining room. When Corrie entered the room, her father and Betsie were already there. Corrie gulped. Three underground workers were also there; they hadn’t made it up to the Angels’ Den in time like Arnold Smit.
The room was filled with uniformed Gestapo officers. The officer in the suit who had escorted Corrie downstairs spoke in a hard, cold voice as he pushed her across the room. “According to Herr Vogel, this one is the ringleader.”
All eyes fell on Corrie.
“See what she knows,” he snarled at one of the uniformed men.
The Gestapo officer grabbed Corrie roughly by her arm and pulled her out the door and down the five steps into the clockshop workroom. He threw her against the workbench, sending a tray of watch parts flying. “Tell me where you hide the Jews,” he demanded.
Corrie felt her concentration leaving her; her throat was on fire; every muscle in her body ached. “God help me not to make a mistake,” she prayed silently. She heard a loud crack and then felt the sting on the right side of her face. The officer had struck her. Her head smashed back against a hook in the wall.
“Where are the Jews?” he demanded again.
There was more silence, and then the crack of another blow to her face.
“How many of them are you hiding?” the officer raged.
More silence, and another blow to her face.
And so it went on. More questions, more silence, more blows.
Corrie could taste the blood as it trickled into her mouth, and she felt herself fading away. In desperation she cried out, “Jesus, help me.”
The officer stopped abruptly. “Never, ever say that name in front of me again,” he hissed, his steely face now red with rage. “If you are too stupid to talk, that frail old sister of yours will tell us what we need to know.” With that he pulled Corrie to her feet and shoved her back up the stairs to the dining room and roughly pushed her into a chair. He smiled evilly as he grabbed Betsie by the apron and yanked her onto her feet.
